


Dizzy Spells

by Jacenia



Series: All that Jazz [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bored Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes is a troll, F/M, Meet-Cute, Natasha Romanov Knows All, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Sneezing, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, South African OC, Swing Dancing, so is everyone else
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 21:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15300567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacenia/pseuds/Jacenia
Summary: She was one of those unlucky people with generic words. “Bless you.” Only, hers repeated themselves, curling along her thigh in a string of ten.





	1. It Had to be You

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a series of short stories and one shot collections based on Jazz songs. This particular work is a collection of one-shots, there is no storyline, and no end in sight.
> 
> Story title: Dizzy Spells - Benny Goodman and his Orchestra  
> Chapter title: It had to be you - Artie Shaw

She hadn’t expected a room like this when Natasha had mentioned a dance studio. She’d expected something small, half a tennis court in size maybe, but the rumours about Stark seemed to be true. He didn’t do anything by halves, so why not have a competitive ballroom size dance studio in the tower?

One of the walls was made up of the floor to ceiling windows that all the outer rooms had, two of the others were mirrored, with barres like a ballet studio, and the third was covered in bookshelves stuffed with records and sheet music for the grand piano which sat in one corner with the turntable. Browsing the shelves, she found them organised by genre and then by either composer or artist. 

“Most of the more modern music is on my system if you require it, Miss Cameron.” 

“Thank-you, FRIDAY.”

Also set in that wall was a door, which she discovered upon investigation lead to a suite of change rooms.

Deciding on swing music, she requested that Friday play the recording of Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert she’d discovered, and sat down to start stretching. 

The room was pleasantly warm with the lazy Sunday afternoon sun slanting in through the windows, itching her nose as she stretched. Eventually, the sneeze she could feel building up decided to make itself known.

“Bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you.”

She tried not to get excited, not to panic. Ten was common enough that she’d heard it before, but she couldn’t help the leap of excitement, the flare of hope when it happened. She was one of those unlucky people with generic words. “Bless you.” Only, hers repeated themselves, curling along her thigh in a string of ten.

__________

He was looking for Natasha. There was, apparently, a new person in the tower he didn’t know about. He couldn’t get a straight story on her out of anyone and he wanted some background before they had to interact. She was, apparently, from Europe and/or Africa and/or Asia, a teacher, performer and scientist, had extra abilities and had done all manner of weird and wonderful things in her twenty something years of life. He doesn’t deal well with unknowns especially ones with seemingly contradictory life stories. Nat wasn’t in any of her usual haunts and he was loath to use Friday to locate people any more than necessary. The AI made him uncomfortable, while simultaneously being a reassurance in case something went wrong.

The only place left was the studio. Nat hated interruptions when she was dancing and was known to come up with creative ways of making this known to anyone who dared to do so, but Bucky’s want for information outweighed the consequences of her displeasure. As he made his way down the corridor, it became obvious that she wasn’t in the studio either. The door had been left open, and the music drifting from the room was achingly familiar. Jazz, not the strange new stuff he’d encountered on occasion, but good old swing jazz, the kind you could dance to. It was an old recording too, the slight crackle of a record player audible, though when he looked into the room, hidden as much as possible behind the doorframe so as not to attract notice, the turntable wasn’t on. 

The woman in the room wasn’t someone he recognised, from what he could see anyway. It was kind of difficult to tell with the way she’d twisted herself into some unfathomable position on the floor. After a moment, she unwound herself, and was sitting up when she began to sneeze, and just. didn’t. stop.

He was so astonished and bewildered by this that he just continued saying bless you over and over until she’d finished sneezing and was sitting, looking somewhat dizzily in his direction.

“Do you always sneeze like that?” He asked from the doorway.

She sighed, “Sometimes I think I must be the most blessed person on the planet.”

She’d started a bit at the uproarious laughter that followed her statement, obviously expecting a chuckle or a grin, at her comment, but not this.

“Is there a reason you find my comment so outrageously funny?” she queried.

“Steve was right and I’ll never live it down.” Was the only information she got before he began chuckling again, at the memory of the way Steve shot down his cockiness over the words scrawled on his side.

“If you would care to elaborate on the subject, I’d appreciate it.” 

She didn’t seem to realise she’d said his words, and he supposed, from her comment, that sneezing so much was a normal thing for her, and that she must have heard those words spoken on a semi regular basis. “Bless you” wasn’t exactly the most unique set of words. Even so, there was a spark of suspicion and hope in her eyes.

He felt a brief flash of embarrassment at the thought of revealing the story and how cocky he’d been about his soul mark, but it would come out anyway the next time she met Steve, and he’d rather she heard it from him. It was also a good way of letting her know she’d said his words, since she hadn’t fully cottoned on to the fact that he was her soulmate yet.

The embarrassment must have shown on his face, for her head tilted curiously and the corners of her mouth lifted.

“I always took it as an ego boost, that the gal who’d say my words thought well enough of me on our first speaking that she’d consider me a blessing. Steve, never one to forego an opportunity to humble me, would retort anytime I’d bring it up with: ‘maybe she just sneezes a lot.’ Turns out he was right.”

The grin that spread across her face as his story unfolded was one of the best things he’d ever seen.

“Better than having ‘bless you’ written ten times over.” She stood.

“I’m Charlotte Cameron, Charlie if you prefer.” She spoke again as she reached him, before he could reply. “You’re taller than me, I’m glad.” 

“James Barnes” he replied, “though I prefer Bucky, and yes, I am. It will be an advantage if you know this music half as well as I hope you do.”

Her answering smile echoed the one from earlier. “Well enough to dance to it and I’ll pick up what I don’t know quick enough. Dinner and dancing on Friday? I know a place.”

It sounded wonderful, and he longed to take her up on the offer, but still wasn’t comfortable or safe out in public for extended periods.

“How about dinner and a lesson in 1940’s swing at the tower instead? It’s still not safe for me to be out.” He offers with a bit of a grimace.

“Sounds good to me.”


	2. People will say we’re in love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time she sneezed around Steve, he got a glint in his eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: People Will say we're in love - Helen Merrill  
> (from Oklahoma! - Rodgers and Hammerstein)

She and Bucky had decided to leave telling Steve they’d exchanged words until after he’d heard her sneeze and they’d seen him react, or until Friday. Consequently she’d spent more time in his company than she otherwise might have.

She was a solitary person by nature, but spent the time she would have been in her rooms in the common room instead, reading or watching TV on the couches there and cooking and baking large batches of food in the common kitchen rather than smaller batches in her own. 

In truth, she preferred using the common kitchen, at home she’d often go downstairs and bake or cook when she wanted to be around people. She’d put music on, and dance and sing her way around the kitchen, with various family members drifting in and out and the dogs sitting under her feet waiting for anything she might let them have. 

Steve, along with several of the other residents of the tower seemed to be drawn to the added activity in the common room when she was there, and she wondered if he didn’t get lonely during the day. The majority of the others in the tower had jobs, the scientists and Tony were in the labs, Sam had his work with the VA and was in DC most of the time, Natasha and Clint did whatever it was that they did all day, presumably something SHEILD and mission related, which Steve could only do so much of, Thor kind of drifted between people when he was there, and Bucky, she had discovered, alternated between recovering, training, drifting and helping Nat and Clint with Hydra research when he wasn’t with her. 

Steve helped with that too, and with whatever he was asked to do, which was different depending on the day, his job really came into play when there were missions to do, which at the moment, wasn’t much. He used his spare time to catch up with the world; watching TV and listening to music. She supposed that was another reason he joined her in the common room, to listen to the music, and watch the TV shows she did. From what she understood, he preferred to do his catching up with, and according to the tastes of those he spent time around, so that he could pick up on the references they made.

Fortunately, or unfortunately for him, she had varied tastes, Tony had whined and complained when he came into the common room while she had opera music on, only to be surprised by her changing the music to heavy metal, or a nature or history documentary to Mythbusters or a sci-fi movie. (Although he’d been amused by her telling the narrators how wrong or stupid they were when it came to anything set in Africa, or to do with insects, but really, they were needlessly dramatic about things which were considered perfectly common or normal if you lived in that part of the world. Rare grey-go-away bird indeed, they were annoying AF and present in every South African garden she’d ever been in.)

This all meant that she spent a rather large amount of the time she wasn’t working or sleeping in Steves company, and got to know him rather well, which Bucky was thrilled about. Bucky had to get more and more creative as the week went on to avoid Steve dragging him to the common room to introduce them. He didn’t avoid the common room altogether, and they had spent a good amount of time getting to know one another when there was no chance of Steve interrupting, and FRIDAY was on lookout. They’d had to include Natasha in their scheme when she’d noticed it, but had managed to keep everyone else in the dark. 

It happened on the Wednesday, and Charlie was surprised it hadn’t occurred sooner with how dry the climate control could make the air of the room when she’d requested it. (Her excuse for that was that it was too humid here, that this was similar to her home, and since she was the only one in the room most of the time, it shouldn’t be an issue.) through a combination of things, she sneezed, seven times this time, and was blessed by those in the room, she’d noticed Steves interest, and decided to use one of her many sneeze quips.

“Ja, ja, now that I’ve been thoroughly blessed we can all get back to what we were doing.” *

Steve’s interest heightened, and he made his way to the other side of the breakfast bar, and took a seat.

“Do you always sneeze so much?” He queried. 

“It’s genetic, I think. My Omi, mom’s grandma, sneezed like that as well. When the two of us got going, we could get over twenty between us in the space of 30 seconds. I’m told it was highly amusing to watch.”

“You know,” Tony piped up form where he was sitting, chatting to Bruce, “they say sneezing a lot feels like an orgasm, you’re the first person I’ve met that could properly tell me if it is.”

She rolled her eyes, “You don’t say,” she drawled. “I only hear that every second time I sneeze around new people. In answer to your unasked question though, it doesn’t. I get a shiver and goosebumps sometimes, and a bit dizzy or lightheaded, like a headrush when you stand up, but that’s about it.”

Steve looked somewhat uncomfortable at the topic, though curious enough for her to know that he was more uncomfortable with the fact that the topic was being discussed so openly in a room with occupants of mixed genders than anything else. Charlie had spent a good portion of her formative years around her grandparents, who would have been a few years older than he and Bucky, and knew how they thought, and the norms they operated by.

“Do you always have something clever to say in relation to your sneezes? You were sarcastic the last time too.” Nat asked helpfully, letting her lips twitch into a smirk where Steve couldn’t see anything.

“Usually. It would be annoying to miss my soulmate because we both had common soulmarks.”  
She could see Bucky leaning in the doorway behind Steve, grinning at her. He nodded once at her and once at Nat, smirking at the both of them. 

“It’s ‘Bless you.’” Natasha stated, laughingly.

“Repeated several times, but yes.”

“Who’s blessing who several times for what?” Bucky asked the room at large.

“Charlotte, for sneezing several times in a row.” Steve said with a gleam in his eye.

“Sometimes I think I must be the most blessed person on the planet.” She said to Bucky, struggling to keep a straight face, and then bursting out laughing as Steve nearly fell off his chair in shock. 

Bucky made his way over to her whilst Steve was recovering, 

“Hey doll, whatcha making?” He asked, peering over her shoulder and planting a kiss on her cheek, trying to distract her so that he could steal a bit of dough. Ignoring Tony’s gleeful cackling, Bruce’s amusement and Nat’s smirk Charlie half heartedly swatted Bucky’s hand away from the mixing bowl and gave the answer of, “ginger biscuits.” 

He moved to lean against the counter, and looked at Steve (whose expression still didn’t know what to do with itself) and said, ever so casually, “I forgot to tell you, I found her and you were right”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * ‘Ja’ is pronounced as ‘yah’ with a long ‘a’ as in car, and means yes. 
> 
> It’s kind of like saying “yeah, yeah I get it.”


End file.
